Elon Musk sued by ex-Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal for non-payment of severance

Former Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal along with 3 other former Twitter executives have sued Elon Musk for $128 million in combined unpaid severance, a lawsuit filed on Monday revealed. This lawsuit filed at a federal court in San Francisco is the latest in the series of legal battles for Elon Musk ever since he acquired Twitter, now X for $44 billion.

Amongst the other former execs suing Musk are Ned Segal, Twitter’s former chief financial officer; Vijaya Gadde, its former chief legal officer; and Sean Edgett, its former general counsel.

These executives say that moments after Elon Musk bought out Twitter, they were fired and Musk accused them of misconduct and forced them out of Twitter after they sued the billionaire for attempting to withdraw from his offer to buy the microblogging website.

Musk then denied the executives’ severance pay they had been promised for years before he acquired Twitter, according to the lawsuit. The plaintiffs say they each are owed one year’s salary and hundreds of thousands of stock options. “This is the Musk playbook: to keep the money he owes other people, and force them to sue him,” the former executives said in the 39-page lawsuit.

“Under Musk’s control, Twitter has become a scofflaw, stiffing employees, landlords, vendors, and others. Musk doesn’t pay his bills, believes the rules don’t apply to him, and uses his wealth and power to run roughshod over anyone who disagrees with him,” lawyers for Agrawal and the other ex-executives added in the lawsuit.

X is already facing multiple proposed class actions claiming it owes rank-and-file workers who were laid off after Musk’s acquisition at least $500 million in severance, and a third lawsuit by six former senior managers making similar claims. X has however denied any wrongdoing and has not yet commented on this matter.

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